Jury finds Parker guilty of murder

An Etowah County jury took about an hour and 15 minutes to find Tyler Parker guilty of murdering Wesley Clifton.

Members of Clifton's family were silent but several wiped tears as Etowah County Circuit Judge David Kimberley read the verdict.

The trial lasted four days. Parker will be sentenced Dec. 7.

Parker, 27, took the stand Friday morning. He told jurors he wanted Clifton brought to his home June 6, 2016, to “hash things out” in relation to a five-year “childish drama between me and him, over a woman who wanted to keep both me and him rattled up.”

Defense attorney Susan James asked if he intended Clifton any harm.

“Oh, heavens, no,” Parker said.

He was accused of cutting Clifton’s throat in the bedroom of his home on Black Bottom Road in the New Union community.

The defense argued Parker killed Clifton in self-defense, and should be acquitted under Alabama’s “stand your ground law.”

After Parker’s testimony and closing arguments, the jury went out for deliberations about 3:30 p.m. They returned about 4:45 p.m.

Parker told the jury he asked Amber McCoy — also charged with murder in Clifton’s death — to bring the man to his residence so he could talk to him about the conflict between them over Jessica Jones, an Albertville woman who had been in on-and-off relationships with both men.

He recounted McCoy’s testimony that she’d messaged Clifton for about two weeks at Parker’s request, gaining his trust so she could bring him to Parker.

During his cross-examination, Chief Deputy District Attorney Marcus Reid questioned Parker about ammonia and bleach he had in his car before McCoy went to get Clifton.

Parker said he always had the products around for use cleaning at his parents' chicken farm and at his home.

McCoy testified she brought Clifton in through the door Parker requested, to Parker’s bedroom, where she saw the defendant grab him by the neck. McCoy left, but returned later when Parker called. He asked her to destroy some of Clifton’s belongings, and gave her a piece of paper with the passcode for Clifton’s phone, telling her to delete the messages and texts.

She later helped him hide Clifton’s car, when burning it didn’t work.

Parker said McCoy brought Clifton to his home and left as he’d asked her to, so the two of them could resolve their issues. He said they talked for as long as 90 minutes, and during that conversation he revealed to Clifton he might have been the father, rather than Clifton, when Jones became pregnant twice.

Clifton was upset, grabbed a knife on a desk in Parker’s bedroom and the two struggled, according to Parker. He said Clifton dropped the knife and went to pick it up again, and he tried to run, but was hit in the back of the head with something — he still doesn’t know what. He fell and pulled out the K-Bar knife he kept at his side and swung backward, he said “to deter” Clifton.

He said he felt the knife hit, and when he got up he saw Clifton bleeding on the floor.

Parker said he then panicked and made a number of “rash decisions,” because he was scared of “losing his life, his children and his family” because of the killing.

He said he bound Clifton’s hands and legs with duct tape so he could get him into a plastic bag more easily, then wrapped the body and put it behind his house. He later buried it in a shallow grave behind the chicken houses.

In closing arguments, Reid said the driving forces in the case were “as old as the Scriptures — David, Bathsheba and Uriah. The blood of Uriah is on his hands,” referring to the Biblical story of a death arranged to resolve a romantic triangle.

James argued that it made no sense for Parker to have killed Clifton in the bedroom of the home where he lived, when he could have had McCoy bring him anywhere.

“He wanted him at his place, where he had what he needed,” Reid said.

He just happened to have a plastic bag big enough for a body, Reid said.

James told jurors McCoy testified while awaiting trial, and “you can bet that won’t happen.” Although prosecutors and McCoy said there was no “deal” for her testimony, she said common sense should tell them McCoy expected one.

Reid forcefully refuted that claim, saying that with Parker’s account of the crime, McCoy would not have been in any trouble.

“If he did it in self-defense, what in the world does she have to be afraid of?” he said.

Parker told jurors he had great remorse. "This was never supposed to happen," he said.

He said the first thing he asked for when he was booked into the jail was the chaplain and a Bible.

Parker said he'd been praying for his family and for him, "every single day," since the slaying.

After the verdict was delivered, members of Clifton's family said they were offering prayers for Parker's family also.

"My heart breaks for them," Sandra Emigh, first-cousin of the victim, said, as other family members murmured "yes," and nodded in agreement. "This is a loss for them."

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